Monthly Archives: February 2015

I was so fortunate to be able to attend a lecture from Temple Grandin. She is an autistic person who has achieved much and overcame obstacles that were turned into assets. She has an HBO movie about her life, she revolutionized the slaughter industry to be more humane and efficient, she also has helped parents and teachers of “different thinkers” to understand the potential and worth of all minds, and she is a Professor in the Department of Animal Science at Colorado State University.

It is not lost on my observations that a person with a disorder that is known for lack of communication, language and social connection has drawn a standing room only crowd, has achieved a PhD, and is about to speak to a very large and eagerly waiting live audience. This shows me, yet again, that absolutely anything is possible.

It takes passion, some luck, and guidance along the way. Many people were instrumental in Grandin’s success, including Grandin. Then I defaulted back to my perspective of human trafficking. What if a rising star, full of potential like Grandin, had been groomed and recruited by traffickers? What would the world have lost and how lucrative would she have been for the traffickers? She would be safe for them because she would be unlikely to speak or be believed, and would probably be very easy to isolate from society.

I shudder and return to reality as she enters the stage. A large crowd applauds, she is introduced and starts off immediately with a comment that makes everyone laugh. She is jovial, well spoken, and a joy to listen to, I would even say entertaining as she points out the obvious observations that many people miss or might be timid to say aloud. She lists the things that helped her to achieve in her life journey and I realize that she is also listing the things that might help prevent victims from being groomed by traffickers.

Reaching and Teaching Life Lessons

She spoke of her family teaching manners. Even though she was autistic she was not to scream, throw fits or cause a scene. She talks about one time licking an ice cream cone like a dog, it was taken away and she was told she must eat it correctly. She wanted that ice cream cone so she never forgot that lesson. So simple, yet in the time of the millennials that simple teachable moment might be actually controversial. She also spoke about being engaged. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want to become social, it was expected.

Her example was of a community movie night, she said, “I was expected to attend. The choice was you can run the projector or sit in the audience but you WILL attend.” Again, another moment that might be viewed as old fashioned. I was at an recent event where one child wanted to attend and the other did not. The one that did not was taken by a parent to wait in the car rather than attending. I remembered my grandmother and thought, oh my, she would have not handled it that way, and giggled at the thought. The point is that some of the 50’s era parenting had a lot of value in creating successful adults.

Grandin also spoke about the many jobs she had starting at a young age and how each of them added to her skill set and the experiences are still with her in her career today. She spoke of Millennials not having real work experience, learning to be on time, finishing a job or task, and doing tasks they do not want to do. She was very funny and very on point about the damage caused by bullying, labels, lack of real world experience, and coddling.

Targets of Trafficking

When I default back into my world of human trafficking while thinking about Grandin’s comments about all the kids/adults she sees “on the Spectrum” ( having traits of Asperger’s, Autism or some other different way of processing information) and her worry for where they will wind up again, I shudder. She spoke about all the people on the spectrum in Silicon Valley working at Google, Apple, etc. I think to cases that I am working on now and she is correct. Many of the victims are “geek” types that have been targeted by traffickers. I think of several cases we are working on and wonder how many more there are that no one knows about.

While filming my episode of MSNBC’s Sex Slaves: Texas Rescue we met one clearly disabled victim being prostituted using her small size to market her as a childlike image for the buyers. She was clearly mentally deficient and could not process the information that we were there to help her, she just couldn’t understand such a concept. We had another case where the victim was totally brilliant in drawing and design, yet someone was prostituting her. We made three contacts with her and each time she was so excited about design, yet we couldn’t get help to her. On another case a young man who was intellectually brilliant, however, a social outcast at school, was targeted by traffickers and when warning his parents about this his father said, “well, at least he has friends now. We are so happy for him.”

It makes me wonder how right Grandin is and what happens to the “different thinkers.” We all need to become teachers, mentors, and helpers that build their social ties and make them aware of their abilities and worth to society. Because, if we don’t, predators will likely define their worth for them and then traffickers benefit and civil society loses. It matters to all of us.

I am grateful for Grandin’s life journey and all she has to offer. I can see the thousands, if not millions, of people and animals she had affected in positive ways and I wonder who else we have missed because their minds and souls were stolen by traffickers.

It’s up to us, all of civil society, to make our communities safe for victims (and different thinkers) and hostile to traffickers.

Remember Grandin’s quote “Nature is cruel but we don’t have to be.”

To experience Temple Grandin watch the video of her 2010 TED Talk and visit her website TempleGrandin.Com:

Dottie Laster is affiliated with the non-profit Bernardo Kohler Center where she is accredited to practice immigration law. She created their Save One Soul human trafficking outreach.

As a weekly Co-Host on the nationally syndicated radio show, The Roth Show, Laster presents discussion and guests who speak out about a variety of controversial subjects surrounding the abolishment of human trafficking and corresponding crimes.

Dottie Laster is featured in the documentary on sex trafficking in Latin bars and cantinas, The Cantinera, and her direct rescue work is the subject of the MSNBC Documentary, Sex Slaves: Texas Rescue. She is the recipient of several human rights awards and has been featured in numerous publications including recent issues of Texas Monthly, Town Hall, and MORE Magazine.

Dottie Laster is the CEO of Laster Global Consulting which has consulted in several high-profile trafficking cases, and has been directly and indirectly responsible for the rescue and restoration of hundreds of trafficking victims. Her strong multi-disciplinary team has an established track record and provide project development, consultancy, and training resources in domestic and international trafficking.

To book trainings in your community and become involved in making your area safe for victims and their families, and hostile to traffickers, contact ImaginePublicity at 843-808-0859 or email contact@imaginepublicity.com

I just watched Selma and of course some of the scenes brought tears to my eyes and hurt to my soul. What was acceptable back then was barbaric. I was born in 1964, so I have some early memories of the years after Selma and Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. I remember my favorite Uncle saying he would vote for George Wallace for president. Even at a young age, I was shocked that someone I admired so much could see Wallace as the possible leader of our country.

I noticed the treatment of people of color – any color – and even as a child of 5 or 6 years old I knew it was wrong. I often felt the humiliation for black men when watching movies or TV. I knew then that I would not stand quiet when I was an adult. I never went against my parent’s authority except when it came to discrimination.

When I was in third grade, I had a birthday party and all the kids in my class were invited except the one that was born of a Vietnamese mother and American father. I remembered crying and saying that I wanted her to come and I was told “NO”! So, in third grade I boycotted my own birthday party, I stayed in my room. I’m sure somehow my parents got me to make an appearance in my small child way. While I couldn’t make it right, I had at least disrupted the party and not accepted the racism quietly. I probably received a spanking as well – one which I took gladly. Today, it sounds terrible even to write it, but in the context of the late 60’s, it was the social norm.

Thoughts on Selma: Then and Now

1965 Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama @Wikipedia

After the movie Selma, I kept thinking about injustice and how it was innate in me to not accept it, how as humans we are wired for justice. We are harmed when we see injustice, especially when we feel overpowered and helpless watching it. These thoughts inspired by the movie moved me forward in time to present day.

I kept seeing in my mind the image of a sex trafficking victim (a minor) in leg irons and handcuffs being sentenced to jail, which I witness often. At many of my speeches, I make the comment that I spend most of my time getting victims out of jail. I wish I could say this is an exaggeration, but unfortunately, it is true.

When we see horrible injustice, crimes that are too horrible to picture, often a default that our brains use to categorize the unimaginable is to blame the victim. This is an easy thing to do and is probably a good survival skill for those sensitive to injustice. It allows the person to move forward and continue their life when faced with something that is too large to combat, repair, or correct. It may also allow them to feel safer because they can reason that they or their loved ones would not make such a silly mistake. If we didn’t make that leap in logic, we might be stuck, scared or our lives derailed at many times when we should proceed. While this is good for the majority of society to proceed with life it is not good for the victims or their loved ones, and it is a constant source of barriers for the advocates.

Then and Now: Case Points

When helping a minor victim of sex trafficking, I was asked by the judge to visit her in juvenile detention. There are words that make people feel better about locking up children like saying detention instead of jail, disposition rather than sentencing. However the truth is juvenile detention looks, feels and locks like jail. I’ve been there several times and jumped every time that giant lock opened and closed.

The child victim was brought to me in a room secured with locks, handcuffs and a jailer. Her parents could only see her through the glass window with the phone-no hugging touching or even free conversation. Each time, I wonder why anyone could think this is civilized, how anyone could buy sex, how these atrocities to justice and a civil society are so accepted?

It is crazy to me now to hear the arguments in the movie Selma, like barriers to voter registration, punishing humans of a different color, stating that human rights were radical, chasing people down in the streets, hitting people and jailing them for peaceful protests because they demanded the existing laws on equality and human rights be respected.

Ignoring the Law

Since 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act states that any minor in commercial sex is a victim of trafficking- no force fraud or coercion need be shown. It also states that victims are not to be punished for acts related to the trafficking.

Arrests in child trafficking Operation Cross Country II, when 105 children were rescued from forced prostitution in October 2008

In 2015, how barbaric it is to prosecute a child victim of sex trafficking as if he or she were the criminal? We often criticize other societies for prosecuting rape victims yet here we are prosecuting a child that has been raped many times, not once or twice. He/she may have been assaulted, witnessed brutal violence, been forced into sex acts that most adults would not be able to imagine much less endure, deprived of sleep, food, and family and now she must be prosecuted? Chained up, locked up, and if that is not enough, it is done under the pretense of “protecting her”!

I wonder when, as a society, we will be as repulsed by prosecuting sex trafficking victims as we are by racist hatred? Will it take as long? This is the 15th year of the TVPA and victims are still being hurt, jailed and killed – they cannot wait (MLK kept telling LBJ in the movie, “people are dying we can’t wait”). There is a fierce urgency – now as then.

In the recent past, in Bexar County, Texas, a buyer of sex was not convicted of killing a prostituted woman because he “paid” for sex with her and she refused. He shot her and remains free under the defense that he was keeping her from “stealing” his property. Click here to read story. She was being advertised on Craig’s list and her pimp, calling him her partner, makes it sound like she had an equal stake in the deal.

Under the TVPA:

Anyone benefitting is held responsible the same as all parties.

If someone dies due to the trafficking, it becomes a capital crime punishable by up to life in prison and possibly the death penalty – the important word here is “dies” not murdered.

She lingered for 7 months paralyzed after being shot in the neck on Christmas Eve of 2009. Much like the atrocities of the juries mentioned in Selma, this jury ruled for the defendant on his right to protect his property, the $150 he used to buy her for commercial sex.

How can we make communities safe for victims and hostile to traffickers?

This year we will blog and speak about real things that amazing individuals and organizations are doing that are truly making a difference. I hope you will follow, join, support and share this work so that we, together, can truly change the world and make many safe havens for trafficked victims.

Maybe one day a victim of human trafficking could even become President!

Dottie Laster

Dottie Laster is affiliated with the non-profit Bernardo Kohler Center where she is accredited to practice immigration law. She created their Casita program and Save One Soul outreach.

As a weekly Co-Host on the nationally syndicated radio show, The Roth Show, Laster presents discussion and guests who speak out about a variety of controversial subjects surrounding the abolishment of human trafficking and corresponding crimes.

Dottie Laster is featured in the documentary on sex trafficking in Latin bars and cantinas, The Cantinera, and her direct rescue work is the subject of the MSNBC Documentary, Sex Slaves: Texas Rescue. She is the recipient of several human rights awards and has been featured in numerous publications including recent issues of Texas Monthly, Town Hall, and MORE Magazine.

Dottie Laster is the CEO of Laster Global Consulting which has consulted in several high-profile trafficking cases, and has been directly and indirectly responsible for the rescue and restoration of hundreds of trafficking victims. Her strong multi-disciplinary team has an established track record and provide project development, consultancy, and training resources in domestic and international trafficking.

To book trainings in your community and become involved in making your area safe for victims and their families, and hostile to traffickers, contact ImaginePublicity at 843-808-0859 or email contact@imaginepublicity.com